New versions for Bookshelf, Stanza iPhone readers
The best keep on getting better. Both Bookshelf and Stanza have come out with new versions that add some useful new features.
This actually hit a few weeks ago, and I had not gotten around to reviewing it until now. It adds a number of useful new features, most notably the ability to download compatible e-books directly from Mobile Safari. It accomplishes this by means of a new Javascript bookmarklet that rewrites webpages within Mobile Safari’s memory, replacing “http:” with a new prefix to tell Safari to let Bookshelf download them.
I tested this bookmarklet with the Bookshelf test page, downloading a copy of Dracula onto my device. It worked just fine, creating a new “Safari downloads” folder within my library and putting the book into it. This will be a very useful way to get new Mobi, Plucker, and PalmDoc books onto your device directly from the web, and is something that other e-book apps could stand to copy.
One word of warning, though: the recommended method for installing the bookmarklet is to use a web browser to sync it to your Mobile Safari app. If you don’t already sync bookmarks this way, your entire collection of bookmarks on the device could get wiped out when you start. Also, if you sync bookmarks from Safari on your desktop, it will stick a couple of useless bookmark folders on your device that cannot be easily deleted.
If you use Windows, it is best to sync bookmarks with Internet Explorer, if sync you must. Hopefully Zack Bedell will add an alternate method of installing the bookmarklet to the website, such as Twitterrific has for its bookmarklet.
Other useful features include direct access to FeedBooks, adding displaying cover art (if available) in the list of downloadable books, and a details screen that gives information about each book.
I should also note that it turned out the glitch that has plagued me for the last several versions of Bookshelf—a freezeup on going into the download screen—turned out to be a faulty configuration file, and was fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling the application.
Bookshelf’s price has also been reduced from $9.99 to $7.99. If you haven’t bought Bookshelf yet, this is a great excuse to upgrade!
Though this is not as great a version number jump as Bookshelf’s, it adds just as many useful features (and a nifty new icon for the program itself). They mostly include things like enhanced book search capability, single-tap bookmark creation, locking font resize gestures, and so on, but there are some other nifty features I haven’t noticed before as well.
For example, there is now a “tips” dialogue when the reader is launched. I flicked through a few of them, and found another new feature not listed on the app store page: it is now possible to search for and retrieve cover art right off the web for books that do not come with it. I tried this out, and it worked quite well. Another new change is that you can now swipe vertically to adjust the brightness or dimness of the screen.
As a free app, Stanza was worth the cost of downloading before. Now it’s even better.
Baen Webscriptions for Stanza
And on a side note, Baen webmaster Arnold Bailey has mentioned on the Baen Bar that he is currently working on an interface to connect Stanza to Baen’s Webscriptions and Free Library, just like the one Bookshelf currently has—he notes that “it’s not finished yet” but it seemed to work pretty well when I tried it out.
In light of the fact that conversation on the bar is considered “private” for purposes of publication (even though access only requires a free login account), and Bailey doesn’t consider the interface to be finished, I think I had best not repeat the URL directly here—but you can find it in the thread “Something new for Stanza/iPhone” in the baen.EBookReader newsgroup on Baen’s Bar. I will link it on TeleRead when Bailey is ready to announce it more publicly.
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